Faust
by ryeden
Summary: "She walks back to her cardboard tower and her back is straight. Her hands are unwavering as she pours imaginary tea into her paper cups; watches them fill and overflow with the river muck, her eyes a glassy black. Corvo dreams and in them he sees her drowning." Drabbles.
1. trembling hands

**I.**

"Corvo, please, can I sleep in here? It feels warmer." He remembers his dreams and a man of coal eyes, sees him charm her with an inquisitive gaze, watches as Emily is entranced by the stars dancing just beneath his skin.

"No."

She walks back to her cardboard tower and her back is straight. Her hands are unwavering as she pours imaginary tea into her paper cups; watches them fill and overflow with the river muck, her eyes a glassy black.

Corvo dreams and in them he sees her drowning.

**II.**

Now he dreams in shades of blues and wakes with sleep paralysis. In the Void there is frostbite on his toes and an itch buried beneath his skin and he feels the chills set impossibly deep, deep into his bones. Sometimes the Outsider gives a flourish, bows his skeletal form as Corvo's skin turns black and rough like sandpaper; he feels his fingers rot and his eyes weep red. He tries to tear into his flesh, to cut away the plague as you would a weed.

He feels the heart beat in his marked palm, red hot and insistent.

When he wakes he calls her name.

**III.**

"The Empire is falling. They need an Empress, not a girl." Emily looks up, into the black, black eyes of the leviathan and extends her hand, sets the line of her pale lips with determination well beyond her age.

"Okay."

Her hand burns, burns red hot with acid pouring into her pores as she becomes what she is told to fear. She does not see the interest twinkling in the black space of his eyes, does not feel his shadow disentangling from himself and seeping into hers with a tilt of his head.

**IV.**

He said it was a gift.

He did not say there were others like her, did not tell her of the urchin with fingers delicate and light like a violinists.

He showed her his mark and he had no name, no bearing. He was even less than the rats.

But he was special, truly, she did not realise she would find his toothless smile as charming and bright as the jewels clasped over her mothers cold, paper neck.

As she crept through the labyrinth of alleys and the dirt caked her royal skin like a lover, she saw the red weep from his eyes and thought he had never looked more beautiful.


	2. cradle songs

**V.**

There are times when Corvo is full of weeping. The tears are torrential as he holds her heart over his.

It is during an hour of darkness, when he cannot picture the knife thrusting through her skin.

Her voice is muted, inert.

The goal was to remind himself that he was still alive.

**VI.**

She is now an Empress, playing with her subjects.

She starts small, as if ripping the wings from flies. Their bodies and minds crumble into ash as her hand burns with her fury, the skin charred and scalding.

They call her Emily the Wise. They are sent to the Void before they think to call her anything else.

**VII.**

He was so old and his bones were so tired in his skin. The killer of Empresses.

Whalers followed the gestures of his fingers and sat upon his steel spine, feather light. There was wisdom in the curl of his lip; disdain for man in the arch of his brow. His name, whispered amongst the corpse carriers - _Daud_- they'd say - _sounds like death_ - and they'd laugh, lifeless bodies adorning their shaking shoulders.

Corvo lifts his arm, the blade almost an extension of his palm, and - _his hands do violence. But there is a different dream in his heart _- Corvo forgives.

But he will never forget.

**VIII.**

Now his hair is white and his eyelids drooped like the drapes in the Golden Cat. There was still life in the crevices of his shaking palms. Dreams still follow the fall of his eyelashes.

He drowns in blue. Wild flowers grow in the holes of his eye sockets. There are bone charms on his headstone.

My dear, dear Corvo.

**IX.**

He had burned down cities with an exhale.

He sings to the whale songs and his skin is stretched taut over his bones. He longed to rest; to close his black eyes like the curtains.

So he sat on his throne of shadows and watched the world fall.


End file.
